Sliding car-door



Patented Oct. 9, 1883.

Illl ELEJIHI.

illiill E. Y. MOORE.

` Figl n. PETIRL Fran-maagzuur. www-51m. n.12.

" SLIDING GAR DOOR.

i (No Model.)

UNITED STATES IJDVARD Y. MOORE, OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

SLIDING CAR-DOOR.

dated October 9, 183.

Application filed August 9, 1853. (No model.)

2b all whom t may concern:

Be it known that I, EDWARD Y. MOORE, of the city of Chicago, in the count-y of Cook and State of Illinois, have invented certain new and useful Improvementsin Sliding Car-Doors5 and I do hereby declare that the following specification, taken in connection with the drawings furnished andforming a part thereof,

is a clear, true, and complete description of my invention.

My said improvements are applicable to doors which are hunger mounted by means of pulleys and rails, and which involve an initial lifting or raising of the door by means of a handlever preparatory to opening or closing said door. As ruling types of doorhangcrs of the class referred to, I will citev those disclosed in the Letters Patent of Earle,

Reissue No. 9,6?9, April 19, 1881, and in the surfaces for making a practically tight joint' therewith, and to accomplish that end is the object of my present invention.

My said improvements are of general val ue in connection with any outside sliding-door; but they are of prime value for use in conneci tion with close railway frei ght-cars from which it is deemed important to exclude dust, drafts of air, (as in ice-cars and car-refrigerators) and especially to exclude suchcinders or sparks as are liable to and vfrequently do ignite combustible freight. Broadly stated, my invention consists in the combination, with a sliding door and its lifting mechanism, regardless of its speciiic character, of automatic lateral clamping devices, preferably inclined wedge or cani surfaces and their abutments, by which the door, when lowered, is automatically forced toward the doorway, caused to closely engage with surfaces coincident with .the surface of the door, and firmly clamped or held in that position. These clamping camsurfaces and their abutments are preferably located both at the top and the bottom of a door for obtaining desirable results, and such may be advantageously supplemented by others located centrally at one edge of the door.

To more particularly describe my invention, I will refer to the accompanying drawings, in which Figure l represents in side view a portion of la freight-car with a sliding door and my improvements applied thereto. Fig. 2 is a vertical sectional view of the same on line y, with the door lifted asin the act of opening or closing.. Fig. 3 is a similar view with the door dropped, as when closed or at rest. Fig. 4 is a side and edge view of so much of a door as is necessary to illustrate a cam-surface and its abutment applied at the front edge of the door.

In illustrating my invention I have selected a suspended door, A; but it is to loe understood that the rollers B and their levers a might as well be located at the bottom of the door as at the top, so far as my present invention is concerned. However said door may be mounted so as to roll and slide, there must be involved some means by which the door is initially lifted orr raised lneparatory to sliding. As here shown, I employ ahand-lever, C, pivoted centrally to the outer surface of the door, and arranged, when swung in either direction, to lift the door and allow it to drop when in a vertical position. This particular arrangement rof hand-lever, pivotcd to the plate c, and the link b, connected with roller-levers a, is novel with me, and is described in my application for Letters Patent iiled November 3, 1881. The straps D, to which the roller-le vers a are pivoted, have each aty their upper ends an inner inclined cam or wedge surface, (l, which, when the door is lifted, is free from engagement with thc adj acont abutment e, which in this case is the inner upper surface of the rollerfrail E; but this latter may well be supplemented at the proper points by wedge-shaped or pointed blocks, as indicatedin dotted lines, with which said surfaces d will have a greater area of contact, and thereby 2 esame render the portions in contact more durable 'than when the edge ofthe roller-rail is alone portions of the angle-plates D, bolted or otherwise secured to the door, and said wedge or cam surfaces so engage with the inner upper edge of the bottom rail, E', as to force the door inward toward the coincident surface of the car when saidA door is not lifted by means of with the adjacent wedge-surfaces d when thev the hand-lever. Vhile the bottom rail, E', in a general way, serves a good purpose for guiding the lower edge of the door, it is obvious that only so much thereof as engages of the cam or wedge surfaces and Atheir abut# ments be reversed, and that can be done with- Y out departure from Ymy invention-as, for instance, the roller-rail E or the bottom rail, E, at the proper points, may have a wedgeshaped lug attached to their inner surfaces, in

.which case vertically-depending abutments might well be employed in lieu of the inclined strap and the depending wedge described. It is also obvious that the door need have no special depending abutment, but may, at its lower front edge, itself engage with the inclined inner surface of a bottom rail, otherwise like that shown.

As a supplemental aid in more firmly clamping the closed door, as described, a bracket, D2, as seen in Fig. 4, may be employed, projecting from the side of the car, and having an open-topped vertical slot inclined on its outer side to afford the cam-surface, as atd, and with this a simple bar projecting from the edge of the door serves as an abutment, e, so that when the door is lifted said bar is readily released vertically, and when lowered it engages with the inclined or cam surface d, and co-operates with the upper and lower devices described for `forcing* the door toward the side of the car and clamping itin that position. It is obvious that such a bar may also be made to do additional duty as a bolt, which, when perforated at its outer end, could be used for securely locking the door by the insertion of the bail of a padlock larger than could be' passed through the bolt-slot.

Aside from the prime valueof my said improvementi. e., rendering closed car-doors cinder proof there are other advantages which accrue from the use thereof-as, for instance, in making up trains, if a car-door, as described, be open or closed and not bolted, it is not liable to be violently thrown to and fro while stopping or starting or when exposed to thrusting shocks from lother cars; and, again, by .thus .conning the doors, whether locked or otherwise, there is much less liability of wasteful wear of the hangers than` when they are left loose and free torattle, as heretofore.

Having thus described my invention, it is to be understood that I believe myself to be the first to provide for the automatic lateral clamping of a sliding car-door, and that I do not, therefore, limit myselfto the precise contrivances ,shown and described; but

I claim as new anddesire to secure by Letters Patent- The combinatiomwith a sliding car-door and mechanism for lifting and lowering it to and from its sliding position,of lateral clamping devices, substantially as described, whereby, when said door is lowered and at rest, it is automatically clamped and forced toward the coincident surface of a car, and thereby rendered tight when closed, and prevented from undue movement whether open or closed and while the car is in motion, as set forth.

EDWARD Y. MOORE. Vitnesses SAML. H. Moonn, ROBERT FoRsY'rH.

IOD 

